Friday, 13 April 2012

Sudeley Castle Exhibit by Belinda Durrant: Where is Mary?

Sudeley Castle Exhibit by Belinda Durrant: Where is Mary?

Belinda Durrant has three new works on display at Sudeley Castle as
part of their exhibition celebrating the quincentenary of the birth of
Katherine Parr. She was gracious enough to share them with us and to
even write what inspired her to make these works.

"It
[the exhibit] was made as a direct response to visiting the castle. I
am no history scholar...just couldn't understand why there was so
little info about the poor little child at the Castle and decided I was
going to find out myself....and promptly discovered that there was
nothing much more to find, which just made it all worse, somehow.

Katherine
Parr was the 6th wife of Henry VIII. After his death in 1547 she
married Thomas Seymour and moved to his country residence, Sudeley
Castle in 1548 where she gave birth to a daughter, Mary on August 30th
of that year. She died from puerperal (childbed) fever just seven days
later and is buried in St Mary’s Church within the castle grounds. The
site of baby clothing often provokes unexplained sentimental reactions,
particularly from women. Freud tells us that this is fetish. Such
clothing reminds us of the child itself and is embraced as a substitute
for the ‘lost’ child. Freud means ‘lost’ in terms of the fleeting
period of babyhood, but in this case, Lady Mary Seymour was apparently
quite literally ‘lost’.

We are told that Mary became an orphan at just a few months old when
her father was executed for treason and that she was sent to live with
Katherine Willoughby, the Duchess of Suffolk. I have been able to find
out very little else. It seems all record of her disappears after August
29 1550, the eve of her second birthday.

The
three works I have displayed in the Castle exhibition centre, ‘Where
is Mary? Bonnet, Mittens, Bib’ were made as a direct response to a
visit I made to the castle in July 2011. The work is not about
embroidery and stitch.

It
is about the ACTS of embroidering and stitching; the almost
ritualistic time, care and love which goes into the making of those very
special first clothes which celebrate the arrival of a new child.

Bonnet which reads "Where is Mary" by Belinda Durrant, picture by Sudeley Castle.